Bruin, the Saugus K9 officer who served on the force for the last 9 years, during which he made more than 500 visits to local schools and nonprofits in the community, had his last ride Thursday afternoon. Bruin was diagnosed with terminal cancer and his condition was rapidly worsening where it got to the point where Officer Timothy Fawcett, his partner, had to accompany him to be put down. The Saugus Police Department had a 30 cruiser procession accompanying Bruin on his way to the vet and the town of Saugus lined the streets to show their respect and say their farewell to Bruin, Saugus' beloved K9 officer.

VB & I got into a huge debate over the 30 car procession that accompanied Bruin. VB thought it was a little much, having that many cruisers go along on the procession and questioned if it was a safety concern for the rest of the community with all these officers tied up in the procession. I see no problem with that many cruisers being a part of Bruin's procession, after all he is AN OFFICER! In addition, I highly doubt the department did not have other officers monitoring the other areas of the community, that would be irresponsible and I don't see SPD doing that. He also can't get over how some of the local news outlets handled the reporting of the story and at times almost choked up, meanwhile there was a tragedy over in New Zealand that they are also reporting on and they didn't see to get choked up about that, so that was his arguing point.

My arguing point here is that take the fact that Bruin is an officer out of the equation, dogs are selfless, loyal, and give us unconditional love. Dogs don't let us down, people do. We as a society have more of a heart for innocent animals over humans because people we know and experience how some humans can be monsters. That's not to say at all that we shouldn't show compassion for humans, of course we should but I can see why people are softer on animals who are more helpless than humans.

I'm not crying, you are! I think the procession and everything they did was perfectly appropriate. It was not too much. Those cruisers would have been out on the street anyway and if this happened in my town, I would be more than happy to accept the fact that my tax dollars contributed to this type of procession and that's fine by me. K9 officers, like Bruin are sometimes the first line of defense and they put themselves in front of danger, in front of those other human officers to protect them from harm. They deserve to be treated with the upmost respect because they are not just some "dog". They are more than that and deserve recognition. Saugus handled it beautifully.